find us where the lost ones go
by nefelokokkygia
Summary: heaven bend to take our hands, and lead us through the fire, in a world made of flame and heat and the dying of a spark. edward elric, alfons heiderich. gen-fic. pre-CoS AU.


this is a portion of a piece written for an AU-plot/pairing fic I have in the works (that may or may not go anywhere), which meddles with the movie timeline and branches off from there (because the movie really did disappoint me). since it may or may not go anywhere, it can also stand alone as a pre-CoS AU piece. in this segment (the larger fic isn't finished, far from it actually), I wanted to explore the potential of Alfons' backstory, and since the movie gives us hardly any solid information, this leaves plenty of room for toying around. I run through the theory of the alter-Edward from the last few episodes of the original series being related to Alfons, base much of his backstory around this theory, and then elaborate on how he and Edward came to meet and look at the development of their friendship (this is most definitely gen-fic, bromances are far too underrated) from there. note and keep in mind that in this little AU-verse, I have kept Hohenheim alive and Edward and Alfons would be in close relation with him. also, I just love me some Alfons.

* * *

><p><em>I miss the life<em>  
><em>I miss the colors of the world<em>  
><em>can anyone tell where I am<em>  
>- 3 Doors Down, "<em>Away From the Sun<em>"

* * *

><p>i. <em>the axis on which the world turns, in pride and heart and a fall<em>

He remembers clearly the day he received the telephone call from Mother. Come home, Alfons, she says, and he can hear the tears in her eyes and down her cheeks. Your little Brother is dead. Alfons nearly drops the receiver at the hard and broken German syllables shattering from her mouth; he thinks the only thing keeping it in his hand is the fact that his body is statue-still like marble, and statues don't falter _(unless they crumble, they sway, they fall)_.

Under the weight of such heavy words, Alfons Heiderich thinks he might.

(He doesn't, because right now there's no one here to pick up the pieces of him if he should.)

Alfons drops his work like fire, of course the Professor understands. Dr. Oberth and his few fellow student-researchers see him off with waves and condolences, and a little black and gold photograph album with too many dog-eared pages to count. It used to hold time-captures of their entire collective rocketry prowess; their antics in grassy, wide-open testing sites, sharing the space of some legendary physicist or another, candids, the night they sat around a small brushfire after another kink in their designs lit it for them, the collective inner workings that ran between the lines of their chalk-drawn blueprints and pencil-lined equations.

It was all they could give him, telling him to fill it with memories of him and his little Brother, because the two of them deserved its space more than rocket mechanics and physics did. They receive his thanks and love in return, although Alfons knows there won't be enough pictures to even fill half of the translucent pages.

(It is the first thing he puts in his tiny black suitcase, and he takes only the barest of things he needs. He doesn't plan on staying any longer than he has to.)

The trains take 4 days to get him to Berlin from the outer edges of Transylvania, and Alfons arrives home before the body of his dead little Brother does.

He was in London studying at its University, Mother tells him when he arrives on the doorsteps of a life he'd rather not come back to. There was a girl. An air raid killed him; the German _Zeppeline_laid hellfire over England yet again. The tears return, and Alfons wraps his arms around his fragile Mother, something he hasn't done in nearly 6 years. He looks up at the gray-brown dust of the German sky, standing on the porch of a house that isn't really home.

(Their Fatherland has killed his little Brother. In its greed, their country has fallen to offering its own Sons as the sacrifices it needs.)

It is on the steps of a dying land that Alfons Heiderich holds his sobbing Mother, and vows that once he leaves, he is never coming back.

Alfons does not enjoy the thought of seeing his Father. At fifteen their paths diverged, and the both of them know they will not cross again in peace. The man carried no respect for rocketry and things that couldn't be calculated with done-right-the-first-time precision, preferring the curves and hooks of bankers' monetary calculations to those of physics equations. When Dr. Oberth had been in Berlin for a series of public lectures and demonstrations at the University, it was Mother who took him and his little Brother, Mother who fed his dreams of sending more than fairground-balloons skyward, Mother who believed.

His Father did not.

There had been no argument. There had been no quarrel. When Dr. Oberth expressed the genuine interest of taking on a willing apprentice to educate and have as an assistant, his Father had let Alfons go quietly. When he goes nowhere in life except where that man takes him and it disappoints him, he and his little Brother had overheard their Father tell Mother, it will be his mistake, not mine.

(He'd left with Dr. Oberth a week later, and the letters he sent home were always addressed to Mother and little Brother.)

The first time they see each other, there are no words exchanged. Sapphire meets cerulean, and his Father is the first to break the trance that has settled over them both. Alfons takes in every inch of his sire, and discovers between the cracks of the dusted black suit and hardened cobalt eyes and softly graying sun-colored hair that the sands of time have slipped between them all. Mother follows behind Alfons, reminding him gently that his old room is now the guest room where he can stay, and that dinner will be ready in an hour. Alfons flicks his gaze back towards his Father, but the man is already gone, his footsteps fading down a hallway into silence.

His room is still upstairs too, Mother says, and everything still in it. Alfons doesn't need his sleep-deprived brain to understand the words she can't bring herself to say. Her hand rests on the small of his back, the faded black waistcoat rough under her touch and most of the only clothing he has presentable enough for the funeral. He tucks his free arm around her, the scratchy wool of the black suit-jacket over his arm a stark contrast with her soft sweater, and he leads her upstairs alongside him.

(Alfons doesn't think she'd have gone up if he hadn't been there to hold her.)

When they reach the top of the steps, she cries.

There is an empty chair at the dinner table, and not because of his little Brother. Mother's cooking has never tasted so sweet and fulfilling, but maybe it's just the years talking and Alfons is simply relearning her maternal kindness all over again. His body arrived at the funeral home tonight, Mother says, enough preservation was done before they brought him here, and tomorrow morning they will finish what they need to. The viewing is tomorrow night, she half-whispers, the funeral the day after, and Mother wipes more than her cheek with her napkin. Alfons doesn't like seeing her eyes red and puffy from tears, but it's not annoyance or exasperation that wells up inside of him at the now-constant sight.

It's the fact that his eyes don't look the same.

The funeral home is quiet and calm, the kind that sends chills up Alfons' spine even though the months are slowly tumbling from spring to summer. He doesn't know any of the people who shake his hand in sympathy or wrap their arms around him or whose names are on the tags of the flower bouquets around his little Brother's casket. He doesn't know the girl with the grass-green eyes and the long lemon-colored hair who sinks to her knees at his little Brother's dead body. He gives them all as much of a smile he can, one that tells them how lost he is, how unfair the whole thing is, how much he misses the little Brother he hasn't seen in too many years. When the priest reads from the bible Alfons hasn't touched since he left Germany, he bows his head not only in grief, but also in regret.

The three of them are the last to leave the home. Mother doesn't want to part with her youngest son's body anymore than she wants to stand and see it in its resting place. His Father holds her as she grips the sleeve of the Sunday-best her son is dressed in, golden hair trimmed neatly and gold-dust eyes forever closed and hands intertwined with a rosary in prayer Alfons knows he doesn't remember. He doesn't want to have to stand and watch as his Mother breaks before his little Brother's body because he might just do the same, but he also can't bear to leave her to do it alone. When she removes her hand from the black wool and turns her head away, she grabs an arm each of Alfons and his Father. They lead her out of the funeral home and to the car, where Alfons sits alone behind the wheel.

The drive home is silent, all but for the sound of Mother and her tears.

Alfons hates the cemetery, and it's not because his little Brother's body will call it home from now until forever. It's not even the fact that he knows he'll end up six feet underground in one someday, with people crying over his headstone like they are his little Brother's. He hates it because of its finality _(under, under, under, death here unto forever and no going back once it buries you beneath)_. The funeral in the little church behind the field of markers did nothing to lift Alfons' spirits. No talk of saving grace and salvation will ease the stabbing sting of the reality that his little Brother is—

Mother is crying again, and Alfons is growing weary of tears.

His Father stands next to him, holding Mother as her crying turns his black waistcoat shiny and damp. Cerulean meets sapphire again, and this time neither of them breaks the stare until Mother's eyes have dried and she is ready to leave her goodbyes at the grave and go home. His Father leads her back to the car, but Alfons doesn't move, and he stares at the gray cross with his little Brother's name and the years that Alfons remembered a kinder world.

His Father is standing next to him again, hands folded behind his back and eyes downcast to the five-and-a-half-foot-long rectangle of earth that will surround his Son's resting place forever. Alfons doesn't move his eyes from the stone gray cross, and it is his Father who breaks, breaks the silence and speaks first. The life you chose, wherever it has led you, is it what you wanted, his Father asks him.

_(the last time he sees his little Brother with his golden hair and eyes and his sharp-toothed grin, the telephone receiver nearly dropping from his hand, the photograph album with too many dog-eared pages_—

Yes, he answers. He doesn't meet his Father's eyes; his own can't seem to leave that damn gravestone.

Are you happier, his Father asks him.

—_Mother's tears, the crackled German sky filled with dust, the steps of a home he doesn't recognize, his Father's bitter eyes and crackled façade_—

No, he answers. He tears his gaze from the stone cross and meets his Father's. The man's expression is written in the lines on his face and the sapphire in his eyes; regret, indifference, shame, _Schadenfreude_. But Alfons doesn't have the fire left to be angry anymore.

—_a flower-surrounded casket, his little Brother's hands intertwined with Mother's black rosary, the girl with the lemon-hair and the broken eyes, the stone cross the only thing his dead little Brother has left to his name)_

And neither are you, Alfons turns away to the car, and the minutes are long before his Father follows behind.

There is a corkboard in the kitchen, filled with photographs Alfons has seen few of. He remembers the studio-graph taken when he and his little Brother were younger; before rocketry, before the War, before the German sky of ash and gravel-rain. Both of them are in their Sunday-best, posed like porcelain dolls for the photographer's lens. There is one of his little Brother with the girl from the funeral home and a group of other boys, all dressed in wool and fur by a Christmas tree in a park. There is another of Mother and their Father, too old and faded to be something either of them had been alive for. Pinned beneath the edge of their Parents is the picture he remembers clearest, taken at a fair in Lustgartens parade-grounds. His little Brother is holding sugar-candy and Alfons is holding a stuffed dog he won at a bottle-knocking contest. Mother's face is nearly smothered by the puff-ball of cotton-candy in her hands and his Father's arm holds her close.

(All of them are laughing. Just as broken Germany has taken its Sons, it has also taken their happiness.)

You can take some of those you know, Mother says from behind him, tears in her voice but dry from her eyes. Take as many as you'd like, we have more.

The corkboard is half-empty by the time Alfons is finished. What he takes doesn't even fill a quarter of the album.

The next day, Mother sees him off to the train, to the long journey back to Transylvania. The both of them hail a cab to the station, and Alfons glances up at the window on the second floor of the house before he gets inside. His Father's firmly blank gaze is set on him, and before Alfons can move his hand in a polite wave goodbye, the curtains drift over his Father's form and hide it. Alfons steps into the cab and closes the door. He doesn't look back.

He plants a kiss on Mother's cheek before he boards the train, and promises to call when he gets home so that she knows he's safe. As she fades out of view and the train moves towards the east, it occurs to Alfons that she never asked him to come back to visit once in a while. He remembers his vow to leave Germany behind him, and he wonders if maybe she wants him gone. A Fatherland that sacrifices its own Sons is too dangerous for one like him.

He doesn't forget to call when he finally arrives, but there are no more letters. Writing a letter is like sending a piece of himself to Germany _(and if he cracks, he knows he'll break_).

When he surprisingly returns to Germany two years later with the mysterious Professor Hohenheim and his eccentric but foul-mouthed son Edward Elric, Alfons contemplates visiting. Then he remembers that Berlin isn't home anymore, and it hasn't been home since he was fifteen years old.

_(bygone days are bygone days; he can't rewind time, and he can't turn back; he doesn't.)_

* * *

><p><em>I'm young and I'm hopeless<em>  
><em>I'm lost and I know this<em>  
><em>I'm going nowhere fast, that's what they say<em>  
><em>I'm troublesome, I've fallen<em>  
><em>I'm angry at my father<em>  
><em>It's me against this world and I don't care<em>  
>- Good Charlotte, <em>"The Young and the Hopeless"<em>

* * *

><p>ii. <em>there is beauty in their eyes that see beyond the borders of themselves<em>

When Alfons Heiderich tastes his first encounter with new student-researcher Edward Elric six months after returning to Dr. Oberth and company, it's not the golden hair or gold-dust eyes that strike him _(although strike them through his heart of hearts they do)_, or the fact that he's just as shy of seventeen as he is of five-foot-six, or even the heavily-accented German that rockets from his swear-like-a-sailor mouth.

It's the way he drops his suitcase, the way his mouth hangs open and the curves of his razor-sharp canines are visible, the way his golden eyes widen in an emotion Alfons can't describe even to this day.

Alfons lowers himself to one knee and grabs the handle of the square black suitcase at the golden-eyed boy's feet, reaching out to this stranger who takes more than a second to realize his belongings are being given back to him. He reaches out a wary hand and takes it, but he doesn't shift his gaze; those gold-dust eyes haven't budged from Alfons' cerulean ones. Tentatively, he reaches out a hand to the stranger whose name he doesn't know. _Ich heiße_ Alfons Heiderich. _Wie heißen Sie_, Alfons says. He hopes the man speaks German.

_Mein Name ist _Edward Elric, the golden-haired man replies, taking Alfons' hand and giving it a gentle shake. The emotion he can't quite name is still burning in Edward's eyes, but it's not as strong as it was and it's not scorching holes in Alfons' own eyes anymore. Edward's German is flawless if informal, but there's something about his accent Alfons doesn't recognize. He's heard German with foreign accents many times before, but never this one he can't place. By now Edward is stumbling over apologies and telling him he mistook Alfons for someone else, someone very important to him, and Alfons lets the subject slide.

(He realizes quickly that he needs his full concentration when Edward talks, because his German is wild and fast-paced and profound and it tumbles from his mouth and scatters around Alfons' ears like midsummer-evening fireflies.)

Before long Edward is sharing laughter and making memories with the rest of the team, and Alfons realizes some things that make him even more curious about this strange Edward Elric from who-knows-where.

The man is a _genius_, and his eccentric behavior has more than just Alfons mesmerized. His precision and speed with formulae and calculations borders on the neurotic, and it's because of his thinking outside-the-box that Dr. Oberth and all of them have made the progress they have. His prosthetic arm and leg that replace the limbs he lost in what he describes as a fucking horrible accident you don't want to know about fascinate them all, and his stories are even more so appealing, enthralling the Doctor and team with tales that would make any novelist of the day green with storytelling-envy. Stories of another world where Alchemy reigns free and strange creatures exist, a Militia where great Alchemists, State Alchemists as Edward calls them, work to improve the lives of citizens everywhere using the mystical Science; heroic tales of the Flame and Strong-arm Alchemists who protected their country during times of war, tragic ones of the bloodthirsty Crimson and the Sewing-Life Alchemist whose family was horrifically torn apart by his greed for Alchemical power and prowess.

Alfons knows himself as a man of Science, his creeds are mathematical formulae and physics equations his prayers, and many of the reasons he hasn't touched a bible since he was fifteen. Before Science, religion and faith were his building blocks, Mother's gentle teachings and his Father's guidance. But it's when he discovered physics and experimentation in the form of calculable quantities and Newton's universal Laws that he became a believer. He knows concepts like God and Heaven and Hell can't be proven; he can't touch God, he can't feel Hell, he can't taste Heaven. Science can be proved, Newton's Laws reinforced, elemental and molecular behavior predicted. The scent of rocket fuel can fill his nose, the metal of steel casing can weigh down his arms, the scent of graphite and chalk and the beautiful pictures they make on blueprints can fill his eyes and mind. Alfons believes he has no time for religion, for fantasy, for things he can't explain.

But try as he might, he can't explain Edward Elric, the man with the golden hair and gold-dust eyes and two artificial limbs from who-knows-where who spins phantasmagoric tales in crinkled German of a world that exists somewhere beyond where anyone on earth can reach.

(And maybe it's what believing in God feels like.)

* * *

><p><em>lines on my face, lines on my hands<em>  
><em>lead to a future I don't understand<em>  
><em>some things don't go as they're planned<em>  
>- Blackmore's Night, <em>"Where Are We Going From Here"<em>

* * *

><p>iii. <em>on the art of walking through the valley of the shadow of the judgment day<em>

The first (and _only_) night they get him mildly tipsy is when Alfons starts to truly wonder if his tales are more than just his own eccentric fantasy, that Edward Elric is much more than he lets other people see. It starts with Loa asking to hear another story about the Alchemy-Planet, as they've likened to calling it since Edward has given no other name for it. None of them think anything of the few mugs of ale Edward's had, or the fact that he quiets down quicker the more alcohol they put into him. Tell us a good one Ed, Dorchett laughs, tell us a scary one, you've never told a really scary one before. Edward's eyes are liquid and dark as they look up from the nearly-empty mug of ale before him. You want a scary one boys, he asks, and his tone frightens Alfons; it's the kind of tone Edward takes when he's about to bust out something he knows will shock or dumbfound or terrorize someone, or maybe a combination of all three, and he says it like there's something deadly lurking within. He leans back in his chair, downing the last of the ale in the mug before his gloved hand slams it back on the table, his eyes clouded with alcohol and a feral wildness that borders on the insane. You want scary, I'll give you scary, I could tell you scary things that'd make grown men want to die and bury themselves alive, believe me, I know scary, he rasps, and he rapidly launches into a _spiel_ about a Gate and Truth and Equivalent Exchange and Alfons is sweating with fear just fucking _listening_to it all. Edward's words are rapidly degenerating into a language that sounds vaguely like German or Danish or even Dutch but at the same time isn't, something so close yet unintelligible, and if Alfons wasn't scared shitless he might've been able to contemplate the idea that it could be Edward's native tongue.

It's when Edward comes to the part about the e_ndless eyes hands blackness blood dead little Brother _and he lifts the right sleeve of his white shirt and the left leg of his olive-colored trousers that Alfons' memories of the night end. He only remembers waking up with a burning headache in the room he shares with Edward of the University dormitory-complex they all reside in, the Doctor and the team gathered 'round and the golden-haired eccentric seated closest to him. He looks down at Alfons with something that Alfons recognizes as sympathy, and he is comforted by it yet wary at the same time.

I told you I knew scary 'Fons, he whispers, and in his gold-dust eyes, Alfons can see fear.

The incident is dismissed as Edward's probable as-per-usual drunken behavior once they all calm down, and not a word is spoken of it again. It's only when Edward is alone with Alfons in their shared room after another day of discussion and brainstorming in-between Dr. Oberth's University lectures that Alfons learns more than he maybe would've liked to. This is why I don't fucking drink in public, Edward swears, because of shit like that and now it's got them all walking on pins and needles around me. Alfons counters with his thoughts that they just need a little time to get over such an open display of behavior in such an unusual state of mind, but Edward bites back with his rough-edged German. Telling them about the Gate is the last fucking thing I need, Alfons, they already think I'm crazy enough because I tell the stories I do; last night was the icing on the damn cake. Alfons decides to be a little daring and venture the question that they are just stories, aren't they, nothing real so there's no harm in being imaginative, but this turns out to be the worst thing he could say as Edward's head snaps around to Alfons' direction so fast they both hear the _crack _in his neck. You think this is all fucking made up, Edward seethes through sharp grit teeth, are you just going to laugh me off as an eccentric loony too; what I've told you all and what I've been through isn't some fucking dream of mine Alfons, and I have too many scars on my mind and body not to fucking know better. I'm a human just like everyone in this damned world here and I have dreams and feelings and memories just like anyone, and if those aren't real and good enough for you then maybe I'm not either—

The door to their room has slammed shut before I'm sorry Edward, I really didn't mean any harm, please, I didn't mean to hurt you can make it out of Alfons' mouth and reach the golden-haired man's ears.

Edward doesn't come back until the moon is high in the sky and the stars are winking down to the earth below. Alfons wakes to something soft being thrown against his head, a raspy _was zum Teufel _escaping his mouth. He hears the distinctive uneven clunk of Edward's footsteps and the crinkling of sheets, and Alfons reaches around blindly for whatever the hell it was that the golden-haired man threw at him. In the light of the moon peeking through their window, he manages to grab the plush soft thing and sees that it is a medium-sized stuffed cat, black with white paws and missing an eye that had been replaced by a sewn-in white button. It's clean, unbearably cute in a historically patchwork way, and Alfons wonders just where the hell Edward found it. Saw it sitting alone in the dining hall on an empty table, Edward yawns from the sheets. Thought you might like it, with you liking cats and all, he quips.

Alfons smiles to himself as he tucks the stuffed feline under his arm beneath the cotton sheets. He's twenty-one and sleeping with a stuffed cat that his best friend and roommate found on a University dining hall table and brought back and threw at him as his way of saying it's a present and you better fucking enjoy it.

(All is forgiven.)

* * *

><p><em>there's a light, there's a sun<em>  
><em>taking all these shattered ones<em>  
><em>to the place we belong<em>  
>- The Age of Information, <em>"Shattered"<em>

* * *

><p>iv. <em>a lamb in the mane of a lion when the sun sinks down down gone again<em>

Alfons' curiosity at Edward's tales heightens at every passing tell-and-retell, but he keeps his suspicions to himself; he'd rather not provoke another enraged response out of Edward by daring to ask one question too many (although another stuffed cat to his head wouldn't be such a bad thing, really). It's not long before the University in München requests Dr. Oberth's presence for another series of lectures and presentations, and there's even a fair going on nearby that would love to see the team give a few demonstrations. Alfons is piqued at the idea of demonstrating in front of a live and large audience, but the prospect of returning to Germany has his head in knots. It's been nearly a year since his little Brother's funeral, and broken Germany isn't any further on the road to rehabilitation than when he left it.

(He doesn't remember a time when his Fatherland wasn't covered in dust-filled skies, but it's never gotten any better either, and that is what frightens him.)

When Dr. Oberth announces the excursion to München, the rest of the team has kittens at his words, while Edward scoffs and slaps a hand to his forehead and mutters what Alfons assumes to be extremely vulgar curses in Edward's strange native not-German language. Alfons dares to ask why the fuss in their room that night, and the golden-haired man's explanation is filled with angry-knifed German about his Father (referred to as such only once, and then known as simply The Bastard from then on), his dead Mother, his baby Brother, what Alfons recognizes to be abandonment issues and over-the-top hand motions of rage, and perhaps a touch of unsaid grudging respect. After listening to the tirade for nearly fifteen minutes, Alfons takes the dangerous chance to ask whether this means they'll be staying with the man or they'll be finding an apartment somewhere. Edward answers with running his fingers through his already-messy bangs and nearly pulling half his hair out, saying that The Bastard would hear Dr. Oberth was in town and know his Son would be along as well, and then by some stupid twist of fate he would find them both and drag them to his flat to stay with Him and God knows Edward wouldn't want to hear it so they might as well just crash his place anyway and save all three of them the trouble.

Alfons is still sitting on the edge of his bed, physics book in hand, staring at the man with the golden hair and the gold-dust eyes across the room who's pulling half his hair out and still cursing his sire in a splattering mess of German and not-German, and wondering if returning to Germany is really such a bad idea after all.

_(It's his fire; the boy is so on fire the gold of his eyes is liquid in the sun and Alfons can't stand next to him without feeling it himself.)_

Perhaps he would learn more about the strange tales Edward Elric tells, and the man Alfons Heiderich knows he can't explain himself.

* * *

><p>** <em>schadefreude<em>: pleasure derived from the misfortune of others.

** in keeping with the idea that countries from the alchemic world are general parallels to many areas and countries of the european and asian continents, I have kept the idea of parallel language the same. if amestris is analogous to germany (as is hinted in the anime and manga and I believe), then language would logically follow, and the amestrian language would be some form of germanic-based similar language, not exclusively english; I see its main base as being german, with some dutch and danish influence for a little flavor, and perhaps a pinch of english somewhere in there as well.

** it is my head-canon that if edward should get drunk, the loosening effects of alcohol on his brain would allow his memories and knowledge gained from the Gate to more easily manifest; in short, a drunken edward is the infallible almanac, word of god, encyclopedia extraordinaire, universal translator-interpreter, and about a hundred or so einsteins all mashed together. this would certainly be a wonderful party trick, unless someone accidentally gets him started on the Gate.

** _was zum Teufel_: a german "what the hell"-type expression.

** if alfons heiderich is alphonse elric's alter, I can't see him not having the same love of cats.

(apologies for all the line breaks between lyrics, ffn's formatting is shit otherwise and the breaks were the only way I could get it to look as close as possible to the original formatting; why ffn can't be as simple as livejournal or archive-of-our-own, I'll never know.)


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